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FTC DRM comments: Industry groups speak up for, against DRM
February 28, 2009 | 6:05 pm
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By Chris Meadows
The FTC has added more comments to the comments page on its March 25th Digital Rights Management town hall meeting since the original batch of 700. The total is now up to 840, including some that were submitted in the very last few days of the submission period.
As Ars Technica observed, it is common practice for industry advocacy groups and other heavy-hitters to hold off on their comments until the very end of the submission process, so they can see what others have written and not give anyone time to respond to their own submissions. For the FTC meeting, a number of industry groups and websites did just that.
As far as the industry groups are concerned, the sentiment seems a bit more evenly divided than the 690 vs. 7 against trend noted by L’Ombre de l’Olivier—there seem to be about an equal number for and against DRM. Today I’ve looked at a few from both sides. We’ll start with the pro-DRM comments.
Software and Information Industry Association
Here is a statement (PDF) from the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA), which seems to be the equivalent of the MPAA or RIAA but for computer software.
The SIIA explain that they have been at the forefront of battling digital piracy for the last twenty years, and they are very pro-DRM, anti-government regulation. They consider DRM “essential to protect copyrighted works,” and at one point they note, “To the extent there is a role for the Government here, the role should be only to promote confidence that technological solutions agreed to by the stakeholders can be enforced to combat piracy problems.” (emphasis theirs)
If they think that DRM is effective against piracy problems, I wonder what world they are living in? As other comments to the FTC note, there has not been one game released, DRM or no, that has failed to appear on peer-to-peer within days, weeks, a month at most of its official release—if not sooner.
All major e-book DRM systems have been cracked, DVDs are cracked and ripped with such ease that it’s easy to forget they’re protected at all, and iTunes music could be cracked prior to their decision to go “Plus” with it (and can still have the identifying information stripped by anyone who wants to share it with impunity). Any “confidence” the government can promote would only be false!
Association of American Publishers et al
Another pro-DRM statement (PDF) comes from the combined might of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), and our favorite two anti-piracy watchdogs, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The Associations’ statement tries to paint DRM as necessary and friendly to the consumer. In addition to technology that controls how consumers can access media, the Associations believe that “DRM should also be viewed as the technologies that facilitate broader consumer access to copyrighted works, and that reflect the parameters of the bargains entered into between owners of content and consumers who purchase access to it.”
Their thesis seems to be that DRM has given content producers confidence that they can sell their material in digital formats with less risk of piracy, therefore more material has become available and in more distribution channels than ever before. They provide examples of movies, software, music, and books (audio and electronic) that are protected by DRM, including bringing up e-book lending libraries.
I don’t see how these Associations can keep a straight face given the ease with which DRM has been and will continue to be cracked time and time again, and the problems consumers have repeatedly had with it. These cracks are used by pirates, but also by people who want more access to the media which they purchase.
Computer and Communications Industry Association
Fortunately, not all industry associations are so much in favor of DRM. A statement (PDF) from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) makes the case that “Digital rights management was at one time viewed as the future of digital content. Arguably, it has yet to meet these expectations.”
The CCIA takes a more neutral stance, admitting that DRM might be necessary in some cases. “Generally, the market should decide when and where DRM is deployed. The public sector role should be to prevent DRM from being deployed in a manner that is unfair or deceptive to the public, or in a manner that is anticompetitive, which would impose higher prices and restrict choices of the consuming public.” It then gives examples of some of those deceptive or anticompetitive DRM practices.
Pirate Party, TorrentFreak
Also on the anti-DRM side, the Pirate Party of America weighs in with a letter (PDF) explaining how the DRM systems of region-encoding and CSS on DVD can prevent consumers from playing DVDs they have legally purchased, and a discussion of the Sony music disc rootkit fiasco. But interestingly, after the letter come a series of revision notes and an outline that were (I am guessing) accidentally made visible when the word document they sent was rendered into a PDF for posting.
BitTorrent news site TorrentFreak also sends a brief statement (PDF) covering the problems that DRM causes in film, television, audio, and software. They conclude, “Ultimately, DRM is an all-or-none measure, that seeks to control, without reference to context. A backup copy is allowed in many jurisdictions, while copying for the purposes of copyright infringement is not. However, both will be restricted by DRM.”
Others
A number of other interesting papers have also been submitted, including some that address the pro- or anti-DRM issue only orthagonally. For example, Christopher Soghoian of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University has submitted a paper (PDF) looking at the risks and failures of the subsidized “give away the razor, sell the blades” business model, and a copy of a request for a DMCA exemption (PDF) to permit the cracking of defunct, no-longer used DRM such as those on DIVX disks or encrypted Yahoo music.
Of course, all of these professional submissions are by far dwarfed by the hundreds of complaints that have been sent by angry consumers. I wonder what effect these will have on the FTC’s agenda for the meeting? I hope there will be ample angry-consumer representation at the meeting itself in Seattle in addition to the flaks the industry associations send.
Hopefully something good will come of the meeting. But one way or another, it is certain to be an interesting day
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Comments:
Nice summary. I agree with the that quote by the SIIA that DRM is a private matter between the consumer and distributor. All government should do is enforce whatever contract these two parties agree upon. (That doesn’t include punishing people who never bought the content from sharing it.) That said, I think that DRM is a futile exercise that can impair the experience of the customer. I just defend the distributor’s right to offer DRMed content and the customer’s right to agree or decline to buy it.
I’ve commented here – http://www.di2.nu/200903/01.htm . I think we’re still at no more than a dozen or so pro-DRM comments
@Francis: Yep, though a lot of those are those polished, well-written advocacy group screeds. There are perhaps an equal number of or fewer well-written screeds on the opposite side, and the rest of the anti-DRM’ers are ranting consumers whose complaints have been, annoyingly, conglomerated into hard-to-read single long paragraphs by the FTC’s lame-brained email system.
Hopefully the fact that there are so darned many aggravated consumer responses will clue the FTC in that the CIAA and RIAA et al don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
Nicely-written blog post. I’m sorry I missed seeing the one about Intel.
In the future, all contact information, social security number, criminal and professional history, race, gender, political affiliation and activity, sexuality and sexual history, and social class will be required to even turn on your computer. And even then you must jump through the required hoops and fulfill your slave roles to earn amount a small amount of time to use it before it automatically shuts off, or attempts to beat you to a pulp while alerting the authorities to haul you in prison, where they’ll force you to work or torture you until you die, and then claim natural or accidental death to the public.
No wait – any mechanical, plumbing (toilets) or electrical machine will require this for access.
All future grimness aside, I cannot condone any present restrictions on my video games (and definitely my toilet access), they’re mine the moment I take it from the greedy merchant at the store, who all the while insists that a loyalty club card is better than a simple direct discount from the store.